Dreams of Black Wall Street

"Tulsa's Terrible Secret" and the Erasure of Black History (1x14)

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Up until the later part of the 20th century, there were sustained and concerted efforts to suppress the full truth of the Tulsa Race Riot, which is now acknowledged as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In the decades that followed, the attack was treated as taboo by both whites and blacks, by residents of Tulsa and government officials, by survivors of the massacre and their descendants. If it was addressed, often times the facts and circumstances surrounding the massacre were misconstrued and in many cases fabricated. Some descendants of survivors have said it was a matter of protecting future generations from enduring a similar tragedy. Others have said it was considered a black mark of shame for Tulsa and few perpetrators wanted to actually accept responsibility for such an event. Dr. Scott Ellsworth - professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan and author of Death in a Promised Land, said quote, “The people who brought it up were threatened with their jobs; they were threatened with their lives.” The suppression of the Tulsa Race Massacre is emblematic of the frequency with which the erasure of black life and anything associated with it took place in the early part of the 20th century.